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While I personally am quite happy Deathwatch are back to being specialist support for inquisitors, I am deeply unhappy that what made them that specialist elite feel - the mix of equipment, armour, etc - seems to be axed with Proteus squads going the way of opponents permission only. Since that is my remaining marine army, I feel it does suck somewhat.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/08/05/assemble-your-agents-how-deathwatch-and-points-values-work-in-codex-imperial-agents/

You mean the "specialist elite feel" of them being Marines with funny unit options?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
While I personally am quite happy Deathwatch are back to being specialist support for inquisitors, I am deeply unhappy that what made them that specialist elite feel - the mix of equipment, armour, etc - seems to be axed with Proteus squads going the way of opponents permission only. Since that is my remaining marine army, I feel it does suck somewhat.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/08/05/assemble-your-agents-how-deathwatch-and-points-values-work-in-codex-imperial-agents/

Valid feelings are valid. But out of curiosity, how often do your opponents veto your use of a legends unit? Especially if that legends unit isn't some superheavy from forgeworld? In my own anecdotal experience, people are generally fine with legends (even happy to see them for variety's sake) so long as you don't come across as trying to exploit some obscure wombo combo.

In a club I regularly attend? Never. Though with the proviso the people who do advertise for tournament games wouldn't accept it, but you would know that when arranging games, so you have self selected people who aren't looking for the complete GW experience by not being eligible for them. Though if you have a brand new player you should really be picking a vanilla army so they aren't being overwhelmed by what you can do.
But pick up games in a venue like a shop? Pretty much all the time. And there isn't much alternative with DW units - splitting the models all up into uneven and incomplete codex squads doesn't really work. So you would end up carrying an awful lot of extra volume 'just in case'.

Deathwatch were always in a weirs spot modelwise anyhow. You needed an odd amount of units for their Mixed Squads anyhow with 0-2 0-4. Models you bought were still being left off the table.

Deathwatch Terminators with All The Guns being dropped is sad.

 Kanluwen wrote:
You mean the "specialist elite feel" of them being Marines with funny unit options?

Yep. A swift overview of a childhood watching various small unit action films will have introduced you to the whole hand picked with different skills and equipment trope. If you missed that their was a Deathwatch game, and then GW did another version of kill team where pretty much every race gets to do something similar.

Personally I thought GW missed a trick with Chaos and not being more imaginative with units. Legionnaires/renegades - large blobs of marines either due to legion organisation or newly turned renegade and codex structures breaking down. Blobs of 10-20 bolter marines with a few options for the champion leading them. CSM, legions who have ended up as the CSM squads in the book. Veterans of the long war, the elite where all old organisation has collapsed and they are like the BL fiction, so 5-10 marines, CSM as the core to which you can add terminators, bikers, possessed, raptors, Havocs and cult marines.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You mean the "specialist elite feel" of them being Marines with funny unit options?

Yep. A swift overview of a childhood watching various small unit action films will have introduced you to the whole hand picked with different skills and equipment trope. If you missed that their was a Deathwatch game, and then GW did another version of kill team where pretty much every race gets to do something similar.

And I wonder if you missed that their codex after the game set up that the "mixed unit" was a specialized thing, rather than the standard?

Hence why it was a "formation" rather than a unit...until they were lazy for the the next few editions and just slapped "Kill Team" as a name on things, and copy/pasted the setup of the formations.

So what it looks like to me is that the DW KT Card that's in the dex WILL BE the Proteus team, which is included in the Ordo Xenos battleforce.

It's the Fortis, Indomitor and Spectrus teams that are moving to Legends.

Now will the new Proteus team be as versatile as the old? Perhaps not; they did start getting rid of Blackshields a while ago, and they adjusted Proteus unit options when the killed combat squads. So it may not be what it once was. But it will be there.

There are currently 2 mk8 squads - the one in the box (death watch veterans), and the specialised team ala the board game and several books. The Proteus Mk8 plus terminators, bikes, assault marines, blackshields etc., for the more movie/narrative team and indeed what they based the board game on (with a named character version).

Which incidentally would make a good kill team kill team for mini marines if GW ever wants to go back tot he compendium and not keep endlessly pushing primaris kill teams (that have even more problems fitting through doors, honestly at this point the best defence in 40k is narrow passages and little doors).

 PenitentJake wrote:
So what it looks like to me is that the DW KT Card that's in the dex WILL BE the Proteus team, which is included in the Ordo Xenos battleforce.

It's the Fortis, Indomitor and Spectrus teams that are moving to Legends.

Now will the new Proteus team be as versatile as the old? Perhaps not; they did start getting rid of Blackshields a while ago, and they adjusted Proteus unit options when the killed combat squads. So it may not be what it once was. But it will be there.

The DW Vets will be the Kill Team going forward. The Proteus team with Terminators and Bikes will no longer exist.

What I am glad about is that they've given up on trying to make Primaris SIA work. Every iteration of it has been a mess.

If the DW Vets unit gets a SIA Bolter as one of its weapon options, I'll honestly consider this a win.

My thing is I want the individual squads to be pointed as playable in other armies. Largely because it makes them an interesting choice and it's a great way of starting an army. One or two units and a character as an addition to your current force and then there's less of a jump to the new faction

 LunarSol wrote:


The DW Vets will be the Kill Team going forward. The Proteus team with Terminators and Bikes will no longer exist.

What I am glad about is that they've given up on trying to make Primaris SIA work. Every iteration of it has been a mess.

If the DW Vets unit gets a SIA Bolter as one of its weapon options, I'll honestly consider this a win.

Ahhh. Yeah, you know, this sounds like what GW will do.

It's stupid though- a squad of vets is not in fact a Kill Team- it's just a squad of vets. If gw is planning on making the other options for a DW Kill Team unavailable, they should drop the language, and just call it what it is: a DW Vet Squad.

As for Primaris SIA- I don't want to say it was good, but if you Crusaded in 9th, there were ways to make Primaris SIA work- you could upgrade the Sarge to always have it, and you could grant the unit access to the SIA Ammo Strat at no cost. You just had to earn those abilities as Battle Honours.

 PenitentJake wrote:

It's stupid though- a squad of vets is not in fact a Kill Team- it's just a squad of vets. If gw is planning on making the other options for a DW Kill Team unavailable, they should drop the language, and just call it what it is: a DW Vet Squad.

Yeah. That's fair. Sadly, "real" kill teams just don't fit a game of 40k's scale super well. As cool as the elite squad of specialists is, they really need to be individual models to work. Not shoved into a single unit where the biker is slowing down for the terminator, and the whole squad is losing bodies left and right because that's what happens in a 2k game. Kill teams just work better as a concept in something like Kill Team.

Given sooner or later everything 1st born is on its way out, we can hope that a Primaris Kill Team could be made that does the mixed team thing well. 4 Vets, maybe one with a Jump Pack and a Terminator as a kit with some weapon options for each guy. It's not impossible to make that work as a squad if you build with the idea of it being a combined arms force in mind.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

It's stupid though- a squad of vets is not in fact a Kill Team- it's just a squad of vets. If gw is planning on making the other options for a DW Kill Team unavailable, they should drop the language, and just call it what it is: a DW Vet Squad.

Yeah. That's fair. Sadly, "real" kill teams just don't fit a game of 40k's scale super well. As cool as the elite squad of specialists is, they really need to be individual models to work. Not shoved into a single unit where the biker is slowing down for the terminator, and the whole squad is losing bodies left and right because that's what happens in a 2k game. Kill teams just work better as a concept in something like Kill Team.

They worked fine in 9th; it's true that some people didn't like them because they typically combat squadded into a 5/5 split, so a Proteus Team might be five Vets + 5 bikes; they were one unit, but they'd combat squad so that bikes could act like bikes and vets could be vets. An Indomitor team could be 5 Heavies and 5 Aggressors, and combat squad.

Now, the combat squad was all about unit behaviour; bikes HAD to combat squad out in order to move like bikes. But with the Primaris teams, some mixes didn't require the split. There was nothing stopping the Aggressors in an Indomitor team from doing all the things Aggressors do just because they're hanging with 5 Heavies, so this might be a unit I wouldn't bother to split.

I'm not saying it was perfect, but it did work, and I did enjoy playing it. I'd say that it's better than what they gave us with the Index and it's better than what we'll get in this dex... But no one I play with has a problem with Legends, and it sounds like all four actual, real Kill Teams will be Legends, which means I haven't actually lost anything (though again, I do prefer 9th ed DW rules to 10th ed- they took the combat squad method of ensuring that bikes in a KT still behave like bikes from us).

Yeah, I don't consider exploiting the system to have 5 man outriders or Eliminators a "mixed" team. Sure, sometimes one guy was an on foot guide or medic, but there wasn't any real group dynamics.

Since the kit includes the parts to make a Blackshield, and they keep showing that model in the marketing, I'm hoping that there will be actual rules for the guy. Right now, one of his swords is really a gun.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:


The DW Vets will be the Kill Team going forward. The Proteus team with Terminators and Bikes will no longer exist.

What I am glad about is that they've given up on trying to make Primaris SIA work. Every iteration of it has been a mess.

If the DW Vets unit gets a SIA Bolter as one of its weapon options, I'll honestly consider this a win.

Ahhh. Yeah, you know, this sounds like what GW will do.

It's stupid though- a squad of vets is not in fact a Kill Team- it's just a squad of vets. If gw is planning on making the other options for a DW Kill Team unavailable, they should drop the language, and just call it what it is: a DW Vet Squad.

As for Primaris SIA- I don't want to say it was good, but if you Crusaded in 9th, there were ways to make Primaris SIA work- you could upgrade the Sarge to always have it, and you could grant the unit access to the SIA Ammo Strat at no cost. You just had to earn those abilities as Battle Honours.

The squad of vets is the original Deathwatch Kill Team from back in 3rd (albeit they used to contain a captain or librarian). Deathwatch have just come full circle

Makes more sense for a 40k level engagement, though pretty rubbish for those who built mixed team armies.

My general squad load out was Serg. With powerfist/ bolter, 4 guys with Frag cannons, 2 terminators with cyclone launchers, and 3 guys with bolters.

In 7th I had four squads of that, and it just roasted elite footsloggers.

So, I know terminators are out. Likely Sarg with fist is out, and down to two Frag cannons per 10 men. Limited to three squads more than likely.

Yippee.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
While I personally am quite happy Deathwatch are back to being specialist support for inquisitors, I am deeply unhappy that what made them that specialist elite feel - the mix of equipment, armour, etc - seems to be axed with Proteus squads going the way of opponents permission only. Since that is my remaining marine army, I feel it does suck somewhat.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/08/05/assemble-your-agents-how-deathwatch-and-points-values-work-in-codex-imperial-agents/

Legends are not opponents permission only.
Unless your in a tourney that disallows them they are 100% valid rules.
If you're allowing your opponent to veto your use of valid units, you'd better be getting something in return. Like veto power over his units....

ccs wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
While I personally am quite happy Deathwatch are back to being specialist support for inquisitors, I am deeply unhappy that what made them that specialist elite feel - the mix of equipment, armour, etc - seems to be axed with Proteus squads going the way of opponents permission only. Since that is my remaining marine army, I feel it does suck somewhat.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/08/05/assemble-your-agents-how-deathwatch-and-points-values-work-in-codex-imperial-agents/

Legends are not opponents permission only.
Unless your in a tourney that disallows them they are 100% valid rules.
If you're allowing your opponent to veto your use of valid units, you'd better be getting something in return. Like veto power over his units....

Being technically accurate doesn't make you practically correct.

Technically, we all have veto power in non-tournament games. I've straight up turned down games against knight and flyer lists in the past because I knew they'd statcheck the models I had on-hand into oblivion.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Technically, we all have veto power in non-tournament games. I've straight up turned down games against knight and flyer lists in the past because I knew they'd statcheck the models I had on-hand into oblivion.

Indeed. We all have veto power over what our opponent is bringing and doing. No one is forcing anyone to have a game outside of tournaments. Just because some units and combinations are currently tournament 'legal' (which still feels like a silly term for rules for a game of toy soldiers) doesn't mean that those have to be played with.

The source of this frustration is GW's inane "No model, no rules" policy. Which, as it relates to Deathwatch, is a little weird since Kill Team Cassius is still available for purchase and yet is moving to Legends.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
The source of this frustration is GW's inane "No model, no rules" policy. Which, as it relates to Deathwatch, is a little weird since Kill Team Cassius is still available for purchase and yet is moving to Legends.

Honestly for once it isn't. They were a very unusual concept to begin with and they've never quite fit into 40k properly as an army. Then there's the challenge of ham fisting bits of units together to make other units and having to find ways to handle all the weirdness that entails.

I liked the combined arms approach with DW. super unique load outs is what drew me to them. I guess I'll just have to settle with about half my army being Legends units :/ I get why GW did what they did. DW just does not conform to 10ths "simpler not simple" game design of 'Here is Unit A with this specific weapon set and here's Unit B with its weapon set.' In the past both would of been a single unit profile with weapons/gear as upgrades or swap outs.

I do think it was a good idea to have 2 different point costs for Agents units depending on if they are Allies or your full army.

What I am worried about is that DW loses access to Oath of Moment since they are no longer a SM Supplement army

Dudeface wrote:


They were a very unusual concept to begin with and they've never quite fit into 40k properly as an army. Then there's the challenge of ham fisting bits of units together to make other units and having to find ways to handle all the weirdness that entails.

Your experience is your own and I'm not here to dispute it- if DW never worked for you and the people you play with, then it didn't work for the people you play with.

Speaking about my own experience, however, DW worked just fine for me in 8th and 9th. As we've seen elsewhere in this thread, combat squadding KTs to allow units to function as units of their own type when necessary was a solution that some people liked and others did not. But it certainly was workable- I enjoyed it a lot, and I will miss it.

I'm not writing of Ordo Xenos/ Deathwatch as printed- this dex will be mine, and I will try out the many permutations and we'll see how it goes. DW were never a main army for me- I have half a Proteus team, 8/10 of a Fortis Team, half of an Indomitor team plus my Watchmaster and a Blackstar. The intent was a full team of each type.

I'm not sure I'm going to bother anymore; I'd nee to buy a box of Outriders to finish Fortis, Terminators for the Proteus, Heavy Intercessors for the Indomitor, and I think I could get away with just one box of Phobos for the Spectrus team, since it's a dual build box. I'd also need five more upgrade sprues to shoulder Termies and Gravis since there are only two pads in that size per sprue. That's just too much stuff to buy when it can't be fielded with standard codex rules.

So maybe my Proteus jus stays a 5 man team, I use 3 of the five Aggressors as just an Aggressor unt (or maybe build my 6th Aggressor and field both units; the three Outriders field as Outriders and we don't worry about Spectrus. The Dread that was earmarked for DW might end up being GK instead. It will all depend on theoryhammer once the book is in hand.

BomBomHotdog wrote:

What I am worried about is that DW loses access to Oath of Moment since they are no longer a SM Supplement army

This is a legit fear. It sucks that the Agent army rule is just a rule that allows them to be fielded. What I'm hoping is that GW has a rule in the new version that allows Assigned Agents to take the faction keyword of their host army for the the purpose of detachment and army rules. Easy enough to add, but will they?

The other freaky thing for DW Specifically is that they will have the Space Marine Keyword, and that might let at least DW (and GK) to qualify as Space Marines when attached to a Space Marine host army- perhaps this is a better solution than giving ALL Agents access to host faction Army and Detachment rules- you don't really want a unit of Hench using Oath of Moment or Orders just because they're tagging along with Marines or Guard- fluff wise, they wouldn't have the skill. But a DW Vet for sure has the skill to Oath of Moment.

It brings up a somewhat similar question for Requisitioned BSS; if they appear in an Agents detachment, do they lose Acts of Faith? It is, after all, and Adepta Sororitas Army rule.

 PenitentJake wrote:
It brings up a somewhat similar question for Requisitioned BSS; if they appear in an Agents detachment, do they lose Acts of Faith? It is, after all, and Adepta Sororitas Army rule.

I don't see why not - Rubric Marines, Berzerkers, and Plague Marines lose access to their army rules (though specifically gain the Heretic Astartes keyword and thus Dark Pacts). Allied Daemons don't even get that, and therefore lose access to Shadow of Chaos.

I'm looking forward to the worst version of this, where Kill Teams don't get Oath of Moment, but also count as a Chapter Keyword and can't be taken with other Chapter models and ALSO trigger that rule that got errata'd in so Space Marines can't take Scouts if they have them.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'm looking forward to the worst version of this, where Kill Teams don't get Oath of Moment, but also count as a Chapter Keyword and can't be taken with other Chapter models and ALSO trigger that rule that got errata'd in so Space Marines can't take Scouts if they have them.

I'm going to assume that they only have the 'Imperial Agents' faction keyword. This way, even if they have Adeptus Astartes and/or Deathwatch as regular keywords, they can still mingle with all other chapters.